Author Derek Lovitch Blogs On

Derek Lovitch, author of How to Be a Better Birder, has been birding like crazy this week, keeping his eyes to the skies and his fingers on a keyboard to keep these blog posts rolling in during this migration season. While he claims to have spotted a whopping 2,905 birds the other morning, we had to cut down his list a little (that’s A LOT of birds!), but the full list can be found hereon Lovitch’s blog.
Be sure to check out Lovitch’s blog,MaineBirdingFieldNotes, and to scroll to the bottom of the page to check out our Fall Migration Giveaway.

This is the 12:00am image from Sunday. This is what “no migration” looks like on the radar. You can also see the rain approaching from the west.

Now this is the midnight image from Saturday. This is what “I have no idea what’s going on” looks like on the radar. While anything from some weird warping of the radar beams from changes in air temperature to a simple malfunction could result in this, what it is NOT is a lot of birds. It’s too irregular…and bird’s don’t “explode” in narrow bands!

So, compare those to what “a whole boatload” of birds looks like. Here are the 10pm, 12am, 2am, and 4am base reflectivity and velocity images from last night.

Yeah, it would have been nice to be on Monhegan this morning. But I was in my other sanctuary – my office at Sandy Point. And this is what happened:

6:28 – 10:05am.
43F, increasing W to NW, clear.

1338 Unidentifed (*2nd highest)
416 Northern Parulas (* Seriously, how are there any more parulas to come through! This is the second highest count of all time, and now all three of the highest tallies are from this year!)
179 Black-throated Green Warblers (*2nd highest)
43 Black-and-white Warblers (*record high)
21 Scarlet Tanagers (*record high)
17 Nashville Warblers (*record high)
12 Eastern Phoebes (* ties record high)
2 TUFTED TITMICE (rarely seen crossing)
1 CONNECTICUT WARBLER (My third of the season here; it’s the fall of the CONWs in Maine!)

1 DICKCISSEL (third of the season here)

Total = 2, 905 (4th highest tally all time for me)

Some of the migrants pause long enough at Sandy Point to do a little snacking. Here’s a Red-eyed Vireo eating Alternate-leafed Dogwood fruits, and a Swainson’s Thrush stepping out into the sun to dine on Winterberries.

A little post-Sandy Point birding yielded two Wilson’s Snipe trying to stay hidden along the edge of a puddle along Greely Road in Cumberland.

And tonight looks just as good…perhaps even a little better with a more northwesterly flow. See ya at the bridge at sunrise!

How to win these awesome prizes? Visit this post for details, but there are numerous ways to enter, including liking any of the three books Facebook pages, emailing us at blog@press.princeton.edu, signing up for our email alerts for Bird and Natural History Titles at http://press.princeton.edu/subscribe/,or following/ tweeting at @PrincetonNature or at any of the author’s Twitter pages (@IDCrossleyGuide or @The WarblerGuide). The winner will be selected at the beginning of October.

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